Because I Have To
by Keinami
Summary: Dee and Ryo know that their relationship really shouldn't work, but they're glad it does.


Disclaimed.

xxx

Dee thought it was stupid when people said things like "You're all I ever wanted." Ryo was definitely not everything Dee had ever wanted.

Dee wanted everything. He wanted women; he wanted men. He wanted double Ds on a frame with a 24 inch waist and hard pecs with a six pack and rock hard biceps. He wanted athletic women who could wrestle him to the ground and rail thin twinks. Red heads, brunettes, blonds, black hair, green hair on one particularly memorable occasion.

There were plenty of things he knew he was never going to get his vanilla Ryo to do, but he _was_ getting kinkier. He let Dee tie him up once, and sometimes he even said "fuck", whispering it as quietly as he could into Dee's ear even though Bikky wouldn't be home for days. If Dee was particularly lucky, he'd let him leave the lights on. There had even been a few toys.

But Ryo was never going to be his first of anything in bed. He'd topped, he'd bottomed, he'd had two women and one man at the same time. (He missed college.) He'd had something and put something in every orifice he could think of. He'd done things he knew he'd never be able to tell Ryo about, if he ever wanted Ryo to look him in the eye again.

But damn it if Ryo's urgent whispers soclose to his ear under the sheets with the lights out weren't hotter than all of it.

It wasn't even that he hadn't had innocents before. There was just something about Ryo he didn't think he'd even tire of.

He didn't get it. Ryo wasn't close to the best he'd ever had. He was still shy, after two years. Ryo almost never initiated anything, and somehow still managed to look confused when Dee leaned in to kiss him. "I love you" had come well before "I want you". Dee did not understand him in the slightest. Once, Ryo stopped foreplay to check and make sure he had packed Bikky's lunch for school the next morning. He had, and Bikky was 15 at the time.

Sometimes, Dee looked at Ryo and wondered why he even talked to this guy. Once a week, Ryo cleaned the grout in his shower with a tooth brush. He watched old foreign movies with subtitles and turned his nose up at wine from the grocery store. His vacuum cleaner got more use in a week than Dee's did in a year.

Ryo had asked Dee why he loved him once, and he'd had absolutely no idea what to say. Ryo had huffed and left the room. Ryo could give dozens of reasons why he loved Dee, he said, and he'd listed Dee's habits he didn't even know he had. Dee didn't know all of Ryo's habits. He didn't know what kind of toothpaste Ryo used, even though Dee used it himself half the time.

You don't love someone for any reason other than that you couldn't not love them, he tried to explain. He loved Ryo because he had to. If Dee had had a choice, there were plenty of time's he'd rather not have been in love with Ryo. No one had been more surprised than Dee when Ryo had finally said yes to him. He'd spent their whole partnership trying to convince himself to get over Ryo, that nothing could come of it. It didn't matter that it wasn't romantic; if he'd had an easy out he would have taken it.

Loving Ryo was so ridiculously stupid. He'd been yelled at for putting the mayonnaise away with the label facing the wrong way- honestly, who _did_ that? Half the time, he couldn't stand Bikky, and he couldn't have one without the other.

They were so hopelessly mismatched. Ryo asked him once if he's known there were potato chip crumbs in his couch. Of course he did, it was his couch. But who the hell cared about a few crumbs? Sometimes, he bought new underwear instead of doing his laundry. They could never agree on what to watch on TV. Ryo didn't seem to understand that the only things that could interrupt the game, EVER, were work and sex. He'd tried to watch a re-run during the Super Bowl, honestly.

After years of wanting Ryo, it took him about a week to decide it would be a miracle if they lasted a month. Their one year anniversary was surreal. He had no idea how or why Ryo had put up with him (or how he'd put up with Ryo, for that matter). If they ever moved in together, he decided, it would be a sign that the apocalypse was nigh. There was no way they would make it a week without Dee running out the door or being wheeled out on a stretcher.

It made absolutely no sense whatsoever that he loved Ryo, but he couldn't imagine what his life would be like without him. Sometimes, he looked at Ryo and felt his face breaking out in the stupidest, sappiest grin a man had ever worn. He hadn't even wanted to fall in love, but somehow he was cuddling after sex without feeling obligated to. It wasn't that he'd never cuddled before; he'd just never felt like his heart would break if he didn't get to.

Heart breaking, that was another completely stupid concept. How could a heart break? It was a muscle, it wasn't like it could just fall apart. But then again, when Ryo yelled at him he felt like someone had carved his chest open, ripped his heart out, pulled it apart with their bare hands and let him miraculously alive, hemorrhaging on the floor. It was so ridiculously stupid that an emotion that made him feel like this was something he wanted to keep. He hated that Ryo had power like that over him. Ryo probably had no idea that he could completely destroy Dee with as little as a goodbye.

He actually stayed up at night to watch Ryo sleep. It wasn't like he had any business loosing sleep, but he did not want to close his eyes and lose sight of Ryo's dark eyelashes against his pale skin, his chestnut hair mussed against the pillows, his pink, soft lips just barely open, his hand gripping at Dee's chest like he didn't want to lose contact either.

He was so completely and utterly fucked. There was absolutely no way he could ever escape this. He didn't even know how it happed. One minute, Ryo was the new guy he wanted to bend over his desk and ride until he couldn't see straight. The next, he was laying his head in Penguin's lap, telling her he didn't know why he bothered or why he couldn't seem to stop.

There must have been a hundred times in the past years that he realized how ridiculously head-over-heels he was for Ryo. Once, Dee had come home late for a shift to find Ryo had taped his game, chilled some beer and ordered takeout. He'd just pulled Ryo against his chest, watching the game without ever really seeing anything. They'd taken a flight to California, and while they were waiting the other passengers to get off the plane so they could get their luggage, Ryo had just looked him in the eyes and touched the collar of his shirt. He'd said something inane about needing to iron Dee's collar when they got back to the hotel, but Dee just looked at Ryo's dark, dark eyes and wanted to kiss him more than he'd ever wanted to do anything in his life. Ryo had blushed and pressed a lightning quick kiss to his lips before turning to take his laptop out of the overhead compartment.

Ryo may not have been perfect in bed, but he was damn good. It only took once for Dee to think he could have died happy, but Ryo just kept getting better and better. The first time Ryo'd worked up the courage to push Dee down onto the bed and ride him like his life depended on it, Dee knew Ryo was finally starting to come into his own sexually. He still couldn't open up and say what he wanted, still couldn't even say the word sex in anything louder than a whisper unless he was snapping at Dee for wanting too much of it. There had been a huge change however, and he couldn't wait to see what changes were still to come.

It certainly didn't hurt that Ryo was probably the most attractive man he'd ever gone to bed with. Ryo, with his perfect strong shoulders, perfect muscled arms, perfect smooth back, perfect pert ass, perfect sized dick, perfect runner's thighs, and perfect, perfect, perfect lovely face. There wasn't an inch of Ryo's body he didn't want to touch, kiss, and lick, although there were a couple inches he'd had to fight pretty hard for.

He adored Ryo. He couldn't think of a better way to say it. Sometimes he looked at him and his chest hurt and he couldn't stop himself from walking over and folding Ryo in his arms. Ryo was always confused by this. He would say "Dee!" in his clueless voice that Dee heard so often despite having been together for two years. He always wrapped his arms around Dee as well, though, smiling and shaking his head.

Ryo might never be his first of anything in bed, but no one had ever made Dee feel like settling down before. He saw Christmas cards together looming closer and closer, and he wondered when he'd let himself fall so hard. It didn't make any sense, but he gave up on thinking it had to.

xxx

Ryo did _not_ understand Dee. They had been together for two years and he was still constantly surprised by Dee's actions. Despite his gruffness, Dee could be very tender. Some days, he would cook Ryo dinner (Dee was a surprisingly good cook) and give Ryo long backrubs before making slow, sweet love to him. He took Ryo to the Met once and wore a suit and was a perfect gentleman for the entire performance.

Sometimes, Dee acted like a total bachelor. He left dishes in the sink for weeks. He ordered takeout several times a week, because he forgot to buy groceries and his milk had expired. His relationship with Bikky was less than stellar. They pretended not to get along more often than they actually didn't, but there had been some screaming matches early in their relationship. When Ryo left the room crying, both of them began trying a little harder, but Dee still called him "the brat" and Bikky introduced Dee to his friends as "that asshole who won't keep his damn hands off my dad". Dee had admitted to Ryo that he loved Bikky one night when he'd had a little too much wine, but they both knew there was no way Dee and Ryo would move in together before Bikky moved out. Still, that would only be a few years and Ryo was really hoping…

He couldn't believe he actually wanted to live with Dee. Dee could not clean up after himself. He put the mayonnaise in the fridge with the label facing away- honestly, who _did_ that? Dee said "fuck" out loud and sometimes even in public. Ryo had done Dee's laundry more than once just so it would finally get done. It didn't seem like Dee's sex drive was ever actually sated.

Dee was constantly pushing Ryo's limits. It seemed like he was always trying to figure out exactly how much Ryo would put up with. Ryo didn't even know what rimming meant before he met Dee. He couldn't believe he let Dee try it after he had googled it. He couldn't believe that he'd had to use the pillow to muffle out his moans over something so completely disgusting. He wouldn't admit to Dee that he enjoyed it, not even a year later, but Dee knew. Dee always knew.

Ryo was so embarrassed to introduce Dee to his aunt and uncle. They were worldly, intelligent people; Dee drank _canned beer_. Dee liked to put his hands on Ryo's thighs under the dinner table, and before they dated he didn't even always chew with his mouth closed. His aunt had found Dee charming, but his uncle was still uncomfortable. Dinners sometimes involved Dee chatting away, completely oblivious, while Rick delicately sate his salad. It was a tense situation, but Elena handled it gracefully.

It did not make any sense that he was so attracted to Dee. Ryo didn't have a _lot_ of experience with women, but he certainly wasn't inexperienced. He liked how his arms fit around a woman's body. The soft curves pressed against him made him feel strong and manly, and he thought breasts were fantastic. Sex with women was very, very nice. It couldn't even compare to how he felt being with Dee, though. Dee's strong, muscled body felt hard against his. He thought it would make him feel weak, to be pressed against another hard man's body like that, but he didn't feel that way at all. Dee made him feel protected without feeling weak. Dee awakened something primal in him that was as exhilarating as it was mortifying. It was hard to imagine how he could possibly enjoy sex with anyone else after Dee. Sex with Dee was a life changing experience, and he couldn't go back.

He felt so horribly immature about the whole thing. He felt like a high schooler in his first relationship; completely and totally enamored with someone perfectly wrong for him. The sex was fantastic, but he was also completely crazy for the man himself. He wasn't sure which was more embarrassing. It seemed like he should be able to control these feelings, but he supposed love wasn't meant to be controlled.

Ryo absolutely did not understand why he loved Dee, but he didn't feel like he could live with out him. It seemed like such a silly thing to think, but he couldn't imagine finding a way to be happy again if Dee left him. It seemed so maudlin, but he felt like Dee was fundamentally altering him. He didn't feel like the same person anymore. The person he'd become didn't always seem like the person he wanted to be. Dee didn't always understand that he needed to be Bikky's father before he could be anyone's lover. Bikky had had a rough upbringing, and he needed stability. Dee wasn't exactly the most stable person Ryo had ever met. Sometimes it made absolutely no sense.

Sometimes, it did make sense. Sometimes it just seemed like Dee balanced him. Since dating Dee, he only vacuumed twice a week. Dee had stopped buying new underwear instead of doing his laundry. Bikky was getting more comfortable with Dee. Bikky had even sat him down in the kitchen and told Ryo he really didn't mind if he dated Dee, because even though the guy was "a total loser and completely beneath Dee" he seemed to make Ryo happy. Bikky said he realized he was going to have to live with Ryo's bad taste when he saw the décor in his apartment. Ryo tried to explain that he liked simple lines and a muted palette. Bikky scoffed and tried to leave the room, but Ryo had stopped him and pulled him into a hug. Bikky rolled his eyes and gave Ryo's back two firm pats before mumbling something about homework, pushing away and going to his room.

So things weren't perfect. Things weren't even always good, but they were a lot better. He felt like his life had been in black and white until he met Dee, and now everything was painted in vibrant colors. Dee was his Oz, his departure, but unlike Dorothy, he hadn't even had to leave Kansas. He could have the rest of his life, the same way it had been, just tinted with something that made everything seem completely different.

He wasn't really sure why he loved Dee, but most of all, he wasn't really sure how he could _not _love Dee.


End file.
